Archeology Rewrites History of Canterbury

CANTERBURY, England —  Canterbury Cathedral, the 900-year-old spiritual home of Anglicans worldwide, was built on the foundation of a huge Anglo-Saxon church, archeologists said Friday.

They said digging to redo the 200-year-old floor of the cathedral revealed an Anglo-Saxon nave as wide and long as the present one.

“This does change the history books,” said Martin Biddle, the cathedral’s archeological consultant. “People were writing only 20 years ago that Anglo-Saxon architecture was small in scale, but it is not true.”